An Absolutely Remarkable Fanfic
by 45twilight3
Summary: My name is Natalie. I didn't discover any Carls. I'm not famous. I'm just one of seven billion normal people who's trying to live life. You've probably heard of April May and her happy saga of how the Carls are here to spread the love. I'm not April May. The Carls ruined my life. I'm pissed. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green Fanfiction.
1. Author note

Due to fanfiction. net's limitations, I will not be posting very frequently.

For the most updated version of this story, see Wattpad:(remove space after "w") my.w .tt/Szf0ONHihT

Favorite this book and I'll keep it updated here, too.


	2. Into

History remembers people like April May. History remembers those who have a hand in how the world is shaped.

No one remembers people like me. I have no control. All I can do is ride the waves and hope for the best.

If you're here to learn more about the Carls, I probably won't be able to help you. I'm just a normal college kid, trying to find my place in this ever changing world. And lately, it's been changing too quickly for me to keep up.

I'm writing this blog for my English class. Over the course of the semester, we're supposed to be blogging about the impact of current events in our personal lives. The professor didn't explicitly say we were supposed to blog about the Carls, but she definitely wants us to blog about the Carls.

Aside from my professor and my classmates, I don't expect anyone else to read this. At the moment, there are 7 billion other people living the same experience as me, so my perspective isn't exactly unique. Maybe, one day, long after I'm gone, future generations will discover my blog and turn my English 301 assignment into an award winning novel.

In the meantime, I'm just going for a C. Most of my writing assignments are inevitably be written at the last minute when I'm running on caffeine and desperation, so I apologize in advance for any typos and my lousy grammar. This is why I'm majoring in engineering. I don't do well with words. However, I'm actually looking forward to this assignment for once, so I might not procrastinate as much as usual. Who knows, maybe I'll even keep the blog going after the semester ends.

I might be able to visit Lagos Carl this summer. I somehow managed to score a summer internship with a Christian based charity based in Nigeria. The pay is garbage, but I'm not in it for the money. I chose Civil Engineering because I'm good at it. I want to use my major to make the world better. My dream is to be a project designer for Bridges to Prosperity and build bridges in third world countries. Unfortunately, they don't hire interns.

I don't know how this story will end. Events are still unfolding around me. For now, I'm just going to write what I see.

My name is Natalie Hines and this is my story.


	3. First encounter

As you know, it all started when the robots appeared. Of course, I didn't realize it had started until the video started trending. Personally, I blame YouTube's algorithm. According to one of my friends, the stupid thing hit the trending page with less than 10,000 views. How is that even possible? Some of favorite YouTubers get a hundred times more and they STILL don't hit the trending page! Anyways, that's besides the point. I'm here to tell my story, and I didn't see the video until later.

It was a cold, January morning. Okay, technically it was 3 pm, but I'm home for winter break, so "morning" is whenever I wake up. I was laying in my bed, scrolling through Twitter when the video popped up on my feed. Like all videos, it started autoplaying immediately.

"K, I'm rolling."

The robot in the background was mildly interesting, but if the creators of the video couldn't figure out how to trim out there chatter, it wasn't worth my time. I kept scrolling.

A few seconds later, there it was again.

"Kay, I'm r-"

scroll.

"Kay, I'm-"

scroll.

"Kay-"

"K-"

"K-"

Oh. My. God. Why was everyone retweeting this same video?

The next time it appeared on my feed, I watched it in it's entirely.

Yup, still didn't get it.

I started reading the tweets along with it. Apparently it was named Carl? And there were lots of Carls?

I didn't know what the big deal was, and frankly I didn't care. I forced myself to get out of bed so I could study physics. Binge watching Crash Course videos counts as studying, right? Jokes aside, I really did need to study. I barely passed Physics I last semester, so I figured I'd need a strong start if I had any hope of passing Physics II. Plus, I have a GPA dependent scholarship...

So, that's the story of how I first learned about the Carls. I didn't give a shit.


	4. Little

Over the next few days, April May was everywhere. I don't know why. She didn't know any more than the rest of us. I didn't pay much attention to the mainstream speculation, but the Carl memes were gold. The entire world was united with the same source material.

And then, winter break ended.

I love my little, but Jayden has no concept of "happy mediums." When she gets a new obsession, she goes all in. Unfortunately, she had chosen Carl as her latest obsession. Within two hours, I had been briefed on every single Carl detail that I had been deliberately choosing to remain ignorant about.

Last semester, Jay rushed Sig Nu and I became her big. Before you start making assumptions about us for being stereotypical sorority girls, our house isn't like most. We're basically the Hufflepuff of sororities. I don't mean that as an insult, we'll give anyone a chance and we're a very diverse, nerdy group of girls. I wasn't planning on rushing, but then I attended the Anime themed recruitment event and, well, the rest is history. Aside from our mutual love of puzzles, Jay and I were polar opposites in almost every way. That's part of the reason we were put together, the recruitment chair was hoping I'd be able to help reign her in. I haven't succeeded.

I knew I wasn't her first choice for a big, but I won her over during big/little week by creating an elaborate scavenger hunt for her. I thought it was obvious that I was the one behind it, but I was mistaken.

On the first day, I gave her a single puzzle. I kind of feel bad about it. She wasn't supposed to actually try to solve the puzzles, the puzzle itself was the clue. While, technically, it was solvable, it had so many layers I never would have dreamed that she'd be able to solve it in a day.

Well, she did. And she was pretty pissed when she found out that all it said was "congratulations, you have cracked my code. Your clue is that I enjoys making complicated puzzles. Sincerely, your big"

After that, I had to step it up a notch. For day 2, I printed out a giant QR code and glued it to the back of a 500 piece puzzle. Well, technically it was a 497 piece puzzle. The other 3 pieces were in the possession of my professors. I gave her clues that lead to their offices. Once again, she missed that all 3 professors were in the engineering department.

While she assembled the puzzle, I worked tirelessly to build a website filled with riddles and puzzles.

Most of the clues were pretty useless, the clue in elvish translated to "I have never seen Lord of the Rings." And the clue in Klingon said "Han shot first." Some codes actually did yield useful information, if only it were about me.

Oh yeah, did I mention we're allowed to lie?

One clue contained a slide puzzle with a picture of a cat and another code which, once broken, read "This is my cat." (It was Katarina's cat) Another clue said "Snapes actions aren't irredeemable" which was a slight jab at Iris, who was the only Snape apologist in the sorority.

There were some puzzles that couldn't be solved without the clues from day 3, and there were a couple she never did crack. (I'll never admit to her that, in my haste, I made a couple typos and they were actually unsolvable.)

The day 3 puzzles were designed to be time consuming. For example, the 5 ft by 5 ft large word search that contained the names of cities I wasn't from.

It was pretty funny watching her solve all the puzzles, yet still miss the big picture. On the last day, I cut her some slack. On the last day, my clues were straight to the point.

1\. All of your clues have been about everyone except me.

2\. You know how I said my home town was in the word search? That wasn't a lie. Your clue is Fibonacci.

3\. Still can't figure it out? Re-examine your gifts from day 2.

If you aren't familiar with the Fibonacci sequence, you add the previous two numbers together to get the next. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13... and so on. If you look at the first row of the crossword puzzle:

I...

The first letter was "I" the second was "A" the third was "M" the fifth was "F" the eight was "R"

The pattern continued and it spelled ou G

I I am from Cheyenne, Wyoming. I'm the only one from Cheyenne.

As for the gift from day 2, I made her a bracelet with my name on it hidden in Morse code. She'd been wearing it all week and never noticed. Later that night,

***EDIT One of my sorority sisters read my blog and informed me that I had to remove my description of the Big/Little Reveal because apparently I was giving away top secret sorority information***

Within our sorority, girls are divided into "families." Since Jay is my little, she became apart of the "Skink" family. The Skink Family consisted of myself, Jay, my big, my grand big, and four other sorority sisters who were my "cousins." Three alums from our family came back for reveal. After Big/Little Reveal,

***EDIT Apparently I'm giving away family secrets too***

After the super secret family traditions that I was forced to remove, Ali, my big, announced that she had made us reservations at an escape room. It was awesome. We finished with no hints and five minutes to spare. Jay and I carried the entire family.

Jay and I have been attached at the hip ever since. Our differences was the reason we worked so well together. I grounded her and she pushed me outside of my comfort zone.

This semester, Jay is officially moving into the sorority house. Unofficially, we've been roommates for a couple months as she'd spent most of the time in my room anyways due to her roommate issues. I don't care about decorations, so I gave Jay permission to decorate the room as she sees fit. I regret my decision. Jay and I are now the proud owners of a life size cardboard cutout of Carl. To answer your next question, no, there is not enough space in our room for a life size cardboard cutout of a 10 foot tall robot. He's propped up behind our bunk bed, so I get a perfect view of his robotic crotch as I'm falling asleep.

Jay stayed on campus during winter break in order to take extra classes. Which is great; however, it also allowed her to fall head over heels into another obsession without me there to keep her on the straight and narrow.

This is the cycle of Jay. She gets bored with her major, so she starts to get distracted, then she invests all her energy into her newest obsession. She stops going to class, grades drop, when her parents threaten to quit funding her education, she begs for mercy and blames the major. She starts fresh with a new major... Until she gets bored and the cycle continues.

I witnessed it first hand when she switched from Business to Journalism, then from Journalism to Dietetics. Once I picked up on her pattern, I was able to find ways to keep her on track. She'd stuck with her new major longer then she normally does, but she was only doing it for me. No one expected her to stick with dietetics and it was easy to see her heart wasn't in it. It only took a month of us apart for her to fall into her old cycle. I didn't want her to waste another semester, so on my first night back from winter break, I did the unimaginable: I encouraged her to change her major.

"April changed her major a lot, too," Jay informed me from the top bunk. Did I mention Jay wouldn't shut up about April?

"What'd she settle on?" I asked from below.

"Graphic Design."

"I could see doing that," I replied.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah, it would suit you," I answered. She hung her head over the bunk so she could see me. I hate when she does that. I always feel like she's going to fall on her head.

"So you think I should change my major?"

"Uh..."

"Me, too!" she jumped out of bed and landed with a thud.

"You've stuck with dietetics for half a semester," I protested as she opened her laptop.

"Fuck dietetics," she said as she typed.

"Don't you think-"

"Too late," she cut me off. "Already emailed my advisor."

"How'd you do that so quickly?" I asked.

"I had the usual template drafted, I just had to add 'dietetics' and 'graphic design'," she paused for a second. "Does our school have a graphic design program? Never mind, just googled it. We do."

In conclusion, my roommate is obsessed with Carl and April May is the reason my little changed her major.


	5. Assignment

I walked into the library and saw a large group of mechanical engineering students studying together in their natural habitat. They had pushed two tables together to accommodate their large group. Laptops and textbooks were scattered across the table. It's pretty common to see students studying in this manner the night before an exam, especially engineers, but it's syllabus week. What kind of monster would assign something so rigorous this early? Two students were starting dejected at a white board. On it, was a bunch of calculations along with a list of random words:

"Immovable"

"Solid"

"Warm to the touch"

Metal

Heavy

On of the MEs at the table was a junior named Sydney.

"What are you guys studying for?" I asked Sydney.

"Gottschalk," Sydney answered dejectedly.

"Ew," I cringed. I recognized the name of the infamous Materials Science teacher immediately. The girls talk about him at SWE. He's universally known as an arrogant hardass, but he's an even bigger asshole towards the girls. Fortunately, I'd never have to take any of his classes.

"He's making us write a report about what the Carl's are made of," Sydney explained.

"That's not so bad?" It was a statement, but I asked it like a question because I knew the ME's wouldn't study in a pack unless it was bad. One of the boys scoffed.

"It doesn't make any sense!" exclaimed Sydney. "The Carls are impossible. Period. There's no material on this planet that could have these qualities. We've calculated the volume. And we're working to approximate the mass." She gestured towards an additional whiteboard. Three other students had drawn a free body diagram and were working to solve a dynamics equation based on a video of a truck attempting to pull over the Carl. The calculations were pretty hardcore. I have no idea how they were able to approximate the force required to tear a Ford F 150 in half, but at a glance, their numbers looked believable. I'd never seen the original truck video, but it had gotten memed because of it's similarity to the Stan Lee cameo in the first Thor movie.

"How many points is the assignment worth?" I asked.

"It's 20% of our grade," answered one of the guys, "Brad and John are driving to the Chicago Carl."

Chicago is a 3 hour drive.

"Damn." I turned to Sydney. She was engrossed in her own calculations and it was clear that she was in no mood to chat. "Good luck."

"We need it," she sighed.

I walked away and sat at a table on the opposite side of the library.


	6. Uranium

I know this blog post isn't due for another week, but since I have nothing better to do as I am stuck in a car for the next 3 hours.

Now, I bet you are wondering why I'm going on such a long car ride on a school night.

You see, about three and a half hours ago, April May posted a video in which she gave a Carl Iodine and americium.

You know what she didn't give him? Uranium.

One of my friends is a grad student and you'll never guess what he has access, too.

The traitor was SUPPOSE to say no. Life never goes as planned, so next thing you know, the three of us were headed to Chicago with an atomic bomb in our trunk.

I should clarify that that was a joke. Our uranium is NOT radioactive.

Fast forward three hours, and we're at the Chicago Carl.

You want to know what happened? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

What a surprise! If only someone could have predicted that and warned Jay BEFORE we drove all the way out here!

We drove three hours just so we can throw a rock at a statue. Look, there's no denying that something happened with the americium. Chicago Carl is definitely missing a hand.

But it took us three hours to get there. In that time, it wouldn't surprise me if someone else was able to get Uranium to him faster.

As pissed as I am, I'm still relieved. I kept insisting that nothing would happen, but didn't know if it was true. I can't describe how intimidating those things are in real life. Our cardboard cutout has nothing on a real Carl.

I don't know who gave Carl the Uranium before us, I just hope nothing serious happened. I can't wait until I get home. I'm looking forward to taking a very long nap.


End file.
